Very few businesses have the luxury of being flush with spare cash, particularly when it comes to budgeting for IT.
The tightening of belts and the ongoing economic issues that are stifling growth across the UK and throughout the world can lead to a vicious cycle of reduced spending and stunted progress.
However, advancements in IT services are making it possible for companies to adopt solutions that are both flexible and affordable, often to the point that they outdo in-house alternatives in terms of their potential cost-effectiveness.
What Is Colocation Hosting
Colocation Hosting is one platform that can help companies to reduce costs, although it is necessary to get a wider appreciation for this particular solution if you want to be able to appreciate where savings can be made.
Package Expenses
One of the reasons why colocation hosting is cheaper than other options in this category relates to the idea that you will only be renting out space in a third-party data centre, not relying entirely on a provider to give you a slice of its own hardware.
This means you can choose the type of components that are used and the regularity with which you make changes and initiate upgrades. As such, subscription costs will be lower than if you were renting everything but the kitchen sink from your provider, as well as giving you a greater deal of autonomy.
Power, Connectivity & Convenience
When hosting a server on your premises, it can often become a bit of a juggling act. You need to ensure that multiple providers and contracts are kept in the balance so that the power stays on and the hosted services are always available via a secure and resilient data connection.
The cumulative costs of bandwidth and power can become overwhelming, which makes careful management even more imperative if there is no alternative but to stick with an in-house solution.
This is not only complicated but also time consuming, which is why the all-in-one approach of colocation hosting can save you time, money and effort.
This is all to do with the economies of scale, since the infrastructure for connectivity and power provision will be much more advanced at a dedicated data center, while individual businesses could not hope to reach the same levels of comprehensiveness or convenience.
Staffing
Some businesses may find that hosting their own server is difficult or impossible because they lack the technical staff to keep the infrastructure up and running, or more importantly cannot afford to hire new workers to address this issue.
Colocation hosting comes to the rescue, letting you free up time for existing IT employees so that they can get on with other tasks, thereby improving productivity, while also saving you money because you do not need to hunt for new permanent staffers.
Space
It might not be an immediately obvious issue, but server equipment takes up space and needs to be installed in an appropriate environment to ensure its continued operation.
When you choose to bear this burden internally, you will have to dedicate an area of your business HQ to all this kit, which could be a bother if space is at a premium and you want to expand into occupied territory further down the line.
With colocation hosting, you can get server equipment out of your hair and still benefit from all the services that it supports, unlocking the real potential of your workplace.
These saving opportunities should hopefully highlight some of the lesser known benefits of colocation hosting. Although money is not always at the top of the agenda when addressing IT, it is not something that should be ignored, because you could be missing out on some real budget-friendly benefits.